Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Stars: Riz Ahmed, Tom Cruise, Jesse Plemons
I’ve been wondering lately if there isn’t a new kind of psychological fatigue entering the collective pathology as notions of truth are perpetually eroded. Be it the self-serving pontifications of politicians spinning crimes into commendations or the relentless deluge of AI generated muck, we’re constantly beset by images, ideas, reports and notions that require pause and second guessing. And we’re not, as a species, known for pausing and second guessing. We’re in too much of a hurry. Only now there’s this need to keep assessing and reassessing the things we previously took for granted, and no allotted time in which to do it. It’s exhausting.
Digger – the latest from polarising and preternaturally pretentious Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu – has A Lot Going On. It’s an ostentatious swing for the fences designed to draw a populist crowd and then confront them with an incredibly arch, artful, needling piece of heightened theatre. It’s a Satire with a capital S, one ambitiously taking aim at our general state of perpetual emergency, encompassing everything from climate change to corporate demigods to the general eschewing of responsibility from all quarters. And, of course, the truth. There’s something inherently egotistical and self-satisfied in any attempt to corral and present a comic serve on the cultural zeitgeist and, to his credit (I suppose), Iñárritu has pulled in exactly the right man for the job. Enter Tom Cruise, done with a quarter century of Missions Impossible, conqueror of death defying stunt work, getting on in years and looking to bag himself that elusive Oscar. There isn’t a better poster boy for self-satisfied smugness.
Cruise stars here as ‘Digger’ Rockwell, aging oil oligarch, probably the richest man in the world, whom we meet in near decrepitude, swathed in silky pyjamas, fussing over his near-mummified pet cat Maggie (a cruel and never funny ‘bit’ that’s as pained as its poor subject). Rockwell’s world is about to crumble, however, as his contentious Greenland drilling platform causes a catastrophic collapse of the ice shelf, sending a berg the size of several cities out into the North Sea. Rockwell – an incessant blowhard who incentivises through intimidation – is confronted by the wages of his cavalier inattentiveness, and we all have to suffer. The similarly haggard President Compson (John Goodman) arrives at Rockwell’s taxidermy mansion with an entourage of politicians and military advisors to demand answers, and a solution to what’s turning into a genocidal international incident.
While Iñárritu and his prosthetics team could’ve saved a lot of time and money just hiring someone more physically appropriate for the role (Dennis Quaid maybe?), Cruise brings certain associations of ego and largess that make him oddly right for the part, and it’s his most committed attempt at something serious this side of Eyes Wide Shut. But it is, like everything else here, a pantomimic spectacle. When Rockwell addresses a seething European court redolent of something out of a Roy Andersson picture (and the audience pocked with mannequins also brings to mind Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy on a superficial level), Cruise delivers a rousing monologue in defense of knowingly reckless behaviour, condemning his detractors for their leeching need for his business. The culpability is deflected outward and it’s pretty convincing. Probably enough to get Cruise’s name on the nominees list next January. It’s showy, blustery work that the movie somehow also finds a way to examine and criticise.
Because nothing is exactly as it seems here, as a puzzling, wearying reveal some 30 minutes into the picture makes clear. Once the (dead) cat is out of the bag, Digger continues to operate, moving the story forward within a new set of parentheses for the audience. There’s a dramatic cost to this. We’re less on the hook for the stakes of the story. I’m sorry to write so evasively, but that’s the problem when there’s something this big hidden in the picture like, well, the underside of an iceberg, actually. This reveal allows Iñárritu (and his cadre of co-writers) the platform to examine the act of satirising. Digger seemingly attempts to become a satire of satire, and a reflection on the drives to continue making art when the world itself is falling to pieces. When there are more important things to do, why paint a picture, write a song, stage a play, make a film? Digger isn’t an attack on these vocations; it’s a rallying cry for their intrinsic value, and the value of doing such endeavours with the sweat of human toil. I can’t hate that.
Big and bolshy as Cruise is, the supporting cast is replete with treasures. Goodman, however, I’m not sure I’d class among them. Maybe he’s too successful at making President Compson a caricature of racist stupidity. A running gag that he has ‘ass cancer’ seems shrewdly placed to elicit lowest-common-denominator laughs (and sucks almost as hard as all the cat stuff), and the character’s shouty/sweary tirades are just boring to listen to. Any scene including him goes on too long. Better are the likes of Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde, who play varying consciences that ‘Digger’ has to interact with. Sadly lost in the shuffle is Sandra Hüller as Rockwell’s half-sister Emma; an environmentalist ultimately squeezed out in favour of the bigger broader comic panels on Old White Men Controlling the World.
That is all feels strongly reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove is, perhaps, unavoidable. If you’re going to do an apocalypse of ineptitude, that’s bound to come up. More intriguing are some of the other associations that move inside the movie. The aforementioned Roy Andersson is a biggie, but there’s also elements of Yorgos Lanthimos, Lars Von Trier circa Dogville, Michel Gondry and particularly Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York in the mix unexpectedly. For much of the picture Digger also manages to feel like a playful dig at art house cinema – funded and watched only by its privileged benefactors. Compounding itself with Cosmo Sheldrake’s winsome, plinky-plonky score, Digger feels destined to become one of this decade’s perceived ‘grand follies’, like Babylon, Megalopolis and Eddington before it (and I liked two out of three of those…).
And if it wasn’t for how honestly annoying it often is, I’d be a reluctant champion for it. But Digger is so exhausting. So inclined to go too far. So interested in obliterating all subtext. Time and again a scene will teeter up to the edge and then stamp all over the line. Like Rockwell, like Compson, it’s a loudmouth that doesn’t know when to stop. That goes for the entire coda sequence aboard a depopulated oil rig out in the middle of nowhere. A fitting but flailing end for Rockwell’s story that only encourages clockwatching. Even when deconstructing itself, Digger labors the point, unfortunately running out of steam and goodwill.
It’s a better grand folly than Iñárritu’s interminable last picture (the fortunately little-seen BARDO, Falso Chronicle of a Handful of Truths). If it is a failure, it’s a fascinating one. For better or worse it’s incredibly interesting to watch. That isn’t the same as enjoyable though. The truth, I guess, is somewhere in the middle.
